George Henry Borrow

Portrait of George Borrow, by Henry Wyndham Phillips (died 1868), given to the National Portrait Gallery, London in 1919.

George Borrow,in full George Henry Borrow (born July 5, 1803, East Dereham, Norfolk, England—died July 26, 1881, Oulton Broad) English traveler, linguist, and one of the most imaginative prose writers of the 19th century.

Borrow was the son of a professional soldier and led a wandering childhood as his father’s regiment was moved around the British Isles; these peregrinations inspired memorable passages in his masterpiece, Lavengro (1851). Between 1815 and 1818 he attended grammar school at Norwich, and it was here that he began to acquire a smattering of many languages. An attempt to apprentice him to the law proved unsuccessful, and early in 1824 he decided to try his luck in London. There he remained for about a year. At length his health collapsed, and he went on a long bohemian pilgrimage through rural England. His adventures, including many contacts with Gypsies, provided some of the background for Lavengro and The Romany Rye (1857). He strayed back again, however, to Norwich, where he completed Romantic Ballads, translated from the Danish (1826). In Spain, while working for a Bible society, he found his literary homeland, whence came the raw materials for The Zincali: An Account of the Gypsies in Spain(1841) and for his brilliantly picturesque, yet highly informative, travel book The Bible in Spain(published 1842; title page date 1843). Its success was “instantaneous and overwhelming.”